To Become an Airbender
by Satiah
Summary: Flying lessons. Day one. Piece of cake. Maybe.


Avatar: The Last Airbender © Michael Dante DiMartino & Bryan Konietzko; Nickelodeon

... ... ...

He was excited the first time the monks allowed him to fly on his glider. Nervous, true, but mostly excited. For years he had watched the older boys glide and had imagined the way the wind would run its flowing fingers through his own hair - oh, wait - that was right; he had no more hair. (Now that he was ten, the monks had shaved it all off.) In any case, he could still imagine it caressing his face, billowing his clothes, streaming past his body as he streamed across the clouds. He could see the earth below, passing underneath in brilliant browns, blues, and greens; birds flying low before catching updrafts and sailing along to guide him home.

As it was his turn to step to the edge of the temple's launching point - the first of his class to take flight in the crisp autumn air - he took a deep breath, held it, and steadied his grip on his glider. The monks had given it to him a few days before, and he had cared for it like he had cared for no other possession in his ownership - oh, wait - it was the _only_ possession in his ownership.

Regardless, as he stepped up to the launching point, he briefly glanced down to the clouds swirling beneath his feet; he felt a rush of exhilaration like none he had ever felt before. A rush of adrenaline pumped through his body and his heart revved itself to life. He was - for lack of better words - _pumped._ Nodding to himself as confirmation of his state of indisputable readiness, he gripped the glider tightly, leaned forward, and...

_Fell._

The wind rushed by him, tearing at his clothing with a ferocity he hadn't anticipated. It screamed past his ears, rushed in his gaping mouth and billowed his cheeks, stung his eyes, and his excitement quickly turned to fear. He fell with uncontrollable velocity, spiraling, screaming, plummeting, plummeting, plummeting...

And then he remembered to pull up. He yanked sharply, overcorrecting, and his glider strained to force itself into a turn so angled. He could feel it trembling above him, quivering with strain, with the wind, with the rippling effect of the force of two awful killing powers: the air and the fall. After a breathless moment, the glider made the turn like a leaf caught helpless in a violent breeze: flipping up, up, and over, it tossed him into an awful loop-de-loop until he was once again falling, just with his feet aimed at the ground instead of his head.

_It's an improvement,_ he thought.

Somewhat calmer now that he had accepted the possibility of an inevitable, forceful, and inescapable demise, he remembered his training. _Guide it slowly,_ the monks had said. He took a deep breath to steady himself, feeling with his hands the way the bamboo frame moved and responded to the slicing wind around him. Once he felt the movement and understood the momentum, he slowly guided his glider until he was no longer spiraling to his death, but rather, floating weightlessly above it. He laughed, weakly and choked by relief, but it was a laugh all the same. (Even if he knew he wasn't out of this yet.)

Slowly and in control, he readjusted his grip, feeling the way his glider responded to the wind before he moved again. Closing his eyes to concentrate on the sensation, he maneuvered the glider by feel, sensing it slice through the air, turning, gliding, _flying_. He felt the air whoosh by his face, caressing his body with unseen rushing rivers, feeling the sting of it against his closed eyelids. He felt his pulse race with exhilaration, felt the way his blood hurtled around his body, how his energy seemed to exponentially pulse and soar with him in the wind.

Only then did he dare to open his eyes.

He saw clouds of white whisk beside him while hundreds of birds flocked below. The rivers and forests shone warmly in the sun, each glowing in its own sparkling carpet. He felt the rush of wind all around him and swore he could _see it_, such was the intensity of the feeling. He looked above and saw a myriad of blue, white, bison, and gliders, all flowing in an invisible stream in the sky. All following an unseen current, swirling, floating, _bending_. And suddenly he understood.

He understood the flow of the skies, the movement of the air. The way it breathed past him as if alive because _it was_. The way the earth itself drew in the air swirling around him and gently blew it back out as he soared ever upward. The way it embraced him so securely in free-fall, the way it decidedly did _not let go._ It had a hold of him; his being, and he understood what it was to be an airbender.

And when he landed, watching the rosy, brightly-lit, excited faces of his fellow monks-in-training, he could feel the rush shared by them all. Pulsing with the blood of one organism, the rush of excitement transferred itself from trainee to trainee, pushing, ebbing, moving, _flowing_. Ever flowing.

He found it hard to sleep that night, too wound up with the fever of excitement. His hands twitched and he felt the rush of air around him, surrounding him, and he couldn't let go of the feeling of complete security in a void of nothing. He swore to himself that this was _it_, what he had been born to do, and he knew he would never forsake what it meant to be one of his own: a part of the temples, a part of the monks, a part of the Airbenders.

As he came to the realization that dawn was breaking over the Southern Air Temple complex and he hadn't slept a wink, but was still too excited to care, he smiled to himself and dressed in the early hours of the morning, feeling the life of the Airbender course through his veins.

And he knew.

He was Airbender Gyatso.


End file.
